Projects

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Projects

New Novel:

I've begun work on a new novel which takes place during World War II. The working title is Sail on Silver Moon. The two main characters are German: Vala Luemke, and Gunther Wolff.

Vala is an emigre to the U.S. who left Germany in 1935 at the age of fifteen. She lives with her sister in her aunt's boarding house and works to complete her high school education despite having little English.

Gunther is the ship's doctor on a Standard Oil tanker being held in port in New York City. He and the rest of the German crew are left adrift in the city. He continues to receive his $28 a week paycheck and uses his time to study English and American history.

When war is declared Gunther and his shipmates are rounded up as enemy aliens and held on Ellis Island. A year later Vala is implicated as a saboteur and sent to the Enemy Alien Internment Camp where Gunther is using his medical skills to serve the camps' internees. Romance and a murder mystery ensue.

I've written a draft outline and am currently doing research. Very little has been written about the Germans - citizens and legal aliens as well as illegal aliens or those without visas - who were held in internment camps during World War II, the last until 1948. (Real spies and saboteurs were held in POW camps.)

Entrance to Fort Lincoln, North Dakota Enemy Alien Internment Camp

Entire families were moved to these camps, some of which looked like small suburban communities with schools, hospitals, and swimming pools. The only difference was that they were behind barbed wire fences and watched by armed guards with police dogs.

German Families arriving at Kenedy Internment Camp in Texas

Little was heard from the internees until the war was over. Even then, most were ashamed of their internment and did not share their stories. Unlike the Japanese, the American government has never acknowledged what it did to the Germans and, obviously, has never paid reparations. Freedom of Information requests have languished.

Some of my research is quite entertaining, though - watching movies produced during the war years. Betty Grable in "Pin-Up Girl' was pretty atrocious, but gave lots to work with in terms of fashion, entertainment, doing one's "patriotic duty" in a secretarial pool, slang, big bands and Conga lines!

Three Completed Novels

The Silence of Sorrowful Hours, takes place before and during the Civil War. Angelise is a Swedish/French Creole Catholic girl from Martinique. After her mother dies, she and her father move to Pennsylvania where her father remarries a Quaker, and Angelise gets a big brother named Osborne. After Angelise and Osborne move to his Uncle Jonathan's farm, they establish it as a stop on the Underground Railroad. When the war breaks out, Angelise and Osborne - along with an actress and two fugitive slaves - carry out their own war against the South.

Pennsylvania farmhouse circa 1850

This book required considerable research, as you can imagine. Lots of books. Lots of online searches. Lots of Civil War movies and mini-series (some pretty crappy). In April 2009 I went to Gettysburg to do hands-on research. I stayed in a B&B that had been a stop on the Underground Railroad. I spent time in the reference section of the Gettysburg Library and at the York County Historical Society. There are too many Civil War experts to allow for any mistakes in my novel!

To read the first four chapters of The Silence of Sorrowful Hours, go to the e-publications page or download the pdf file.

Prologue from The Silence of Sorrowful Hours

In September, the wilting heat was more oppressive and the sound of sluggish flies bzzzz-ing in ever-widening circles was more monotonous. The smells of ripe apples, horse droppings, and lime from the garbage dump were dragged on the wind. But in September, as well, a soft morning breeze could carry the scent of wheat chaff as it floated across her face. All of it conspired to remind her of years of Septembers. Osborne had gone to war in September. She pushed up the loose strands of damp hair that had fallen out of the combs holding her hair in place.

I Know You by Heart was completed at the end of 2008. It tells the story of two young lovers separated when the boy goes off to war. Their lives are fraught with missteps, tragedy, and sorrow, but each finds fulfillment by giving to others. Finally, many years after their first parting and a later attempt at reconciliation, they find each other again. Can trust be rebuilt? Can love be rekindled?

Excerpt from I Know You by Heart

From the top of the dunes, Caroline breathed in the salt air and watched sleepily as a fishing boat moved out to sea. It was almost dawn; the moon had faded and white combers rolled into shore. She sat on the cold, soft sand, holding her knees to her chest. The boat, the coming light, the smell of brine and tar mingled to evoke something from the past, something that always lingered close to the edge of her memory. Wrapped in a sea mist, she listened to the waves breaking and rolling to shore. She could feel the sea’s breath, salty and damp. She closed her eyes and saw him, felt his breath on her face.

The Grass Beyond the Door is the story of a girl who grows up with an alcoholic mother and a remote and distant father. She learns how to navigate her difficult teen years by finding her own sense of the possibility of a life "beyond the door" and with the help of a young man with whom she falls in love.

Excerpt from The Grass Beyond the Door

She dreamed the smell of violets; the smell of freshly mown grass was in the air. A soft breeze sneaked across Johanna’s sleeping face. She made a mewing sound. Was it a night in April? Warm first, then rainy, crickets loud in the yard; the apple trees in the orchard were billows of white blossoms. The most beautiful day, the loveliest day, revealed just before it leaves you.

Squinting through eyes that did not want to open, Johanna saw a sky tinted by the sun to a soft shade of pink. It felt like a day from her childhood, when her Popa would wake her just as the sun was rising. He would give her chocolate milk and cinnamon toast at the children’s table; then they would go out to water the gardens before the sun was too high in the sky.

Johanna listened for the sound of the rooster coming from the next-door farm. Was that her Popa’s knock she heard at the door? When she turned to look, she was not in her bedroom in the old house; the knock was at the door of her apartment. It was not spring. It was a chill wind that pushed under the window propped open by a wooden ruler turned on its side.